What are you working on right now?

#227

I’m currently preparing for a playtest of a pretty total rework of Soulhunters, a game I wrote years ago, which has come back to my attention.

Elevator pitch: Soulhunters is my attempt at making a game which feels like the Souls series of videogames, and as such focuses on a party of Undead travelling the world, unraveling its mysteries. This iteration steals the basic resolution mechanic from Houses of the Blooded.

Why I’m excited: Soulhunters is a game I ran a single session of back in 2014, posted online, and then completely forgot about. A year or so ago someone reached out to me, saying that some of his favourite roleplaying experiences came from playing the game, and he actually set up a website for it. I started fiddling with it, wrote some setting material, and then by chance read through Houses of the Blooded, and the resolution mechanic got me so excited I wanted to rework Soulhunters around it.

First goal is making a game my friends will enjoy playing, and perhaps bringing a one-shot version of it to some smaller Danish conventions, but I hope to eventually make it into a small PDF with the base rules, and then subsequently publishing some setting material of various kinds.

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#228

Recently, I have been working on a hack of Adv. World of Dungeons focused on Greek heroic stories using Mazes and Minotaurs for the character classes and abilities. I love it for the simplicity and creating a rules light and tone filtered for my tween son and his friends.

I will consider it a success if my son asks to play again :smile:

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#229

I am currently working on “Stage,” a gamemasterless universal story roleplaying game.
The goal is to make it possible to tell almost every Oneshotstory imaginable without a gamemaster.

The project is nearly finished, written, and already tested (it works) in german. I didn’t publish it yet on my web site because of spelling, but this is only a matter of time. I am thrilled with it. In fact, I think it is time to go international with this. I will try to translate it in English, and I will try to test it here. This is why I even came to the gauntlet. I was thinking about it for quite a while, but now I have a good reason

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#230

Welcome to the community @Marot.
I’m sure a lot of us will be interested to hear more about ‘Stage’.

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#231

The elevator pitch:

Nexus of Worlds*
A PbtA game about playing superpowered beings in a varity of settings. The biggest focus of the game is flexibility and cooperative storytelling between the players and the gamemaster, especially when it comes to creating and shaping the world: Play to find out what happens and leave blanks.

The mechanics of the game will allow for great flexibility in how you create the characters. There is no predetermined theme/setting and it will by default, be created by giving prompts to the players an shaping it with their input.
*Might not be the final name

Why you’re excited about it
Never done a full blown project that became a published piece. Have done a big homebrew “book” though once, so I am really excited to see where this will go.

The inspiration for this came from an old and obscure rpg called Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game (MURPG) which had a incredible simple yet flexible character creation system and was resource based instead of dice.

But GM’ing it was a little of a hassle and headache. But then I found out about PbtA, and felt an urge to try and create something that brought both together into a incredible flexible game were cooperation was at center of the game.

What your hopes are in relation to it
I am hoping that once I get to a playable stage, that I can find people willing to give feedback on the game so that once released, the product might at least give someone a great time.

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#232

You can count on me! I loved MURPG

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#233

• The elevator pitch

What Once Went Wrong: A two-player PbtA RPG based on the premise of the 90’s TV series “Quantum Leap”: Each episode, the PC leaps into a new body, new story, & new conflict. One player & One GM work together to “put right what once went wrong.”

Persuasion, Intelligence, & Empathy are the three PC stats. The game’s campaign will change themes from session to session. The PC or GM will not know if they have completed their mission until the PC preforms a successful Leap Move into another body.

• Why you’re excited about it

First time writing an RPG. It’s been a blast planning it out. Looking at what made the show great. Designing moves that recreate those show traits. I’m trying to get my first playtest set up soon. Also, I love this show!

The setting would be the real-life past. Per the rules of Quantum Leap, within the lifespan of the PC. Dealing with past/current cultural, social justice, political issues. Mixing in some historical fiction along the way.

• What are your hopes with it?

Nothing big yet. I want to get through a few playtests and see how it works. I’m open to hearing thoughts, comments, or possibly want to playtest; you can DM me if you’d like to keep it off this thread. Cheers!

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#234

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The Elevator Pitch - A Sparked by Resistance game of fantasy athletes rising above their circumstances and themselves. It’s inspired by the storytelling of sports manga greats — Haikyuu, Captain Tsubasa, Ashita no Joe — and the fantastical sports of fiction — Blitzball, Quidditch, Pro-Bending, Et Al. The homebrew setting, Yveltion is a syncretic mix of a swash buckling, sabre slinging fantasy-of-manners with Song/Tang era Wuxia meant to have a place for any player while addressing the complex, painful realities of even the most benevolent of empires on the smallest of individuals — our athletes.

Why You’re Excited About It - I love Resistance a lot, and after Heart expanding its mechanical world became an obsession. The sport at PT!'s core, Buckle, is powered by the very magic that binds the Scholarchy together, and the system to abstract games in a way that stills allow for the most exciting parts of sports narratives is something I’m pretty excited by. Yveltion is also my longstanding homebrew I’m excited to share and expand, it’s a raw expression of my personal syncretic beliefs in a lot of ways.

What Are Your Hopes With It - I mean a small print run would be a dream, but i just want people to see the dang thing. My artist Roz Bessel does incredible work and she’s bringing so much to the table. I’m hoping to find a co-author soon to help me with cultural sensitivity and to bring perspective to any of my usage of Eastern Asian history and culture for the roots of the Scholarchy. I’d also really like to help bring momentum to Sparked by Resistance, its an incredible system i truly believe in!

8 Likes
#235

While I’m waiting for some of my other projects to get released (they are out of my hands now), I’ve been writing long essays again about the nature of classic dungeon crawl play.

This latest is on the importance of spatial factors and layout in adventure design and how it can help to center exploration play and mechanics.

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#236

I’ve been working on The Wildsea, but not so much on the core text anymore - in the last couple of weeks we got picked up by a publisher, set the kickstarter date, had an extremely unexpected migration to the discord and brought two new artists onboard. In fact, I really miss having time to actually write for the game, but life at the moment is mostly a slew of contracts and marketing and meetings and podcasts.

Of course, it’s all lovely - I’m overjoyed, really. But it’s also very, very not my usual pace. It’s been pretty hard to adapt.

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#237

Magpie’s PbtA Design Festival on Saturday was a very interesting day including a helpful input from Mark Diaz-Truman on his design philosophy. There was also an opportunity to play test some games in developments from attendees.
It gave me plenty of food for thought as I tweak Eotenweard, my game of Dark Age heroes, for Gauntlet Con over the coming weekend.

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#238

The elevator pitch

Everyone Is a Suspect : A Descended from the Queen game where you play as a Suspect in a murder case. A Great Detective is summoned and everyone could be the murderer. Tell us (and the Detective) what your motives were (even if you’re innocent), what opportunities you had, what are your secrets. Then, the Great Detective will gather all of us and make us innocent (while revealing our secrets). Except for the murderer who will be revealed !

Why you’re excited about it

It’s a format I really like, and it’s a theme that my wife loves. I enjoy rereading some classic as inspiration, and some twists I chose are coming great.

What are your hopes with it?

I want to be able to make it work well without my watch. It may be published in physical, and it would be a first

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#239

@Gulix, I would be happy to playtest this for you!

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#240

I’m working on heaps of stuff right now, as having (possibly briefly) come out of lockdown I have a lot of pent-up creative energy.

A thing people on here might be excited about is, I’m working on a potential second edition of Lovecraftesque. There’s a bunch of new ideas that we’ve been discussing, plus bits of learning from recent Lovecraftesque-descended games.

Watch this space!

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#241

That sounds like a really cool game.

I do know of one other rpg in development using that title, though. You may want to change the name, or contact the other designer and work something out so there isn’t confusion between the games. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/280630

#242

@rabalias, I’m not keen on anything Lovecraft but your Last Fleet looks awesome! What else do you have going on?

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#243

@Deckard I should probably say that Lovecraftesque isn’t Lovecraft, it’s GMless cosmic horror where you create your own gribblies.

But anyway, to answer your question, I’m working on:

  • Elementary, a GMless murder mystery game where you compete to implicate your chosen suspect
  • Project WTF (not actual title), a Neverwhere-like game about transitioning from normalcy to a weird magical world
  • Nuns With Guns In Spaaaaaaaaaaaace (real title has fewer "a"s), about power-armoured nuns investigating supernatural threats and shooting them in the face, then returning home and confessing their guilty sins.
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#244

updated oct. 20th : New ! With printable cards !
At the instigation of Ted Foley from Fictioneers, I just finished

SpaceShifters, a totally space spies game (with spice ?).

Excitementation :
More like light-hearted nostalgia.

Hopefulment :
That someone would scavenge some tags, prompts or leads from the various games tables.
In my wettest dreams, that someone would point at a good source for free and easy illustrations to transfigure this vile lead into shining orichalcum.

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#245

Thanks. I have to stabilize it first (and got some playtest in french first), but I’ll try to make it english.

Thanks! First, I didn’t know that game and will go check it out. Then, the game is first dedicated to french market (with a french name). If it happens to get translated, I will check the title to not use one previously owned. ^^

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#246

It’s intimidating to post here, so many great ideas and products all over the place!

The project I’m most excited about at the moment is called “Spontaneum”, a rules-light narrative system with character ‘creation’ on-the-fly.

It’s setting agnostic, and one of the main design goals is to follow the flow of a film, book or TV show season, in the sense that we learn new aspects of the characters as the story unfolds. You only need a core concept to get started (not very different from Cypher’s or Risus). Characters also have a special resource pool called Protagonism that will vary throughout the sessions, but allows players to Reveal traits, increase rolls, and mitigate negative consequences.

Being descriptive and collaborative, I expect it to be able to cover a variety of different genres, and I’m trying to make it work for one-shots, but adaptable to sequels, be them episodes in a season or another storyline from a franchise.

Early stages, but progressing steadily.

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